Anastomosis procedures are required for connecting or re-connecting body tissue, e.g., as part of a surgical procedure. The tissue may be part of a body lumen such as a blood vessel, intestinal or other digestive system tissue, or tissue relating to the urinary system. As one example, in a radical prostatectomy, a surgeon removes all or most of a patient's prostate. Because the urethra travels through the prostate immediately before reaching the bladder, the upper part of the urethra is also removed with the surgery. The procedure leaves a severed urethral stump and a severed bladder neck. To restore proper urinary functions, the bladder and the urethra must be reconnected.
Conventionally, a surgeon may execute delicate suturing operations with tiny, fine needles to reconnect these or other anatomical bodies. Installation of sutures, however, with a needle, to connect severed tissues, can be a difficult and technique-sensitive task. Many factors can make the task difficult, including a very small amount of tissue to work with (e.g., at the urethral stump and at the bladder neck), and proximal sensitive tissues such as ureters at a bladder and a proximal nerve bundle and sphincter at a urethral stump. These factors result in complicated and delicate suturing procedures that, if not performed properly, could result in complications such as leakage, difficulty in healing or failure to heal, or specific conditions such as incontinence or impotence. Specific problems include necrosis of the sutured tissues; stricture of the urethra, which impedes the flow of fluid through the urethra; and a urethra-bladder connection that is not fluid-tight. In addition, methods of suturing the urethra to the bladder allow for accidental or inadvertent piercing of the nearby neurovascular bundle, which can cause incontinence or impotence.